Is it possible to lose a mother then get four in return? It is for Lily Owens, a fourteen year old girl living in South Carolina in the 1960’s. In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character, Lily, lost her mother at a very young age, but she found many more mothers along the way to help her cope with her loss, grow out of ignorance, and to find love again.
For example Rosaleen, Lily’s nanny, is a mother-like figure because she takes care of Lily when her father does not do a good job of it. At the beginning of the novel, Lily lives with her father, who she calls T-Ray. Her mother died when she was young, and now she only has her father and Rosaleen to live with her and to raise her. T-Ray convinces Lily to think that her mother left them, not that she died. T-Ray told Lily, “‘The truth is your mother ran off and left you’” (39). Rosaleen takes care of Lily. Roseleen is someone Lily can talk to when T-Ray is being abusive. When Lily had enough of T-Ray’s cruel punishments, she ran away with Rosaleen to try to find someone who knew Lily’s mother, Deborah, to find answers about what really happened to her.
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They were both African-American, and they helped Lily grow out of the ignorance of racism in the world. May was very emotional, and she reminded Lily of Deborah because Lily remembers seeing her mother feeding marshmallows and graham crackers to cockroaches to lead them out of the house, and May did that too. Lily thinks that May might have known Deborah and taught her that trick. At first, June was reluctant to have Lily stay at their house because she was white. “‘But she’s white, August’” (87), June said, nervous to have Lily in the house. Throughout the novel, June and Lily bonded and became closer friends. They helped each other get over their inclinations toward people with the same skin color. May and June nurtured Lily, and made her a more amiable and unprejudiced
“Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.” (Snicket). When someone is struggling or feeling distress, that person will most likely make another person feel the same way.
Over the past several decades, individuals have began building capital at an early age. People do not want to be stuck in a financial bind every month. They do not want to stress about how they are supposed to pay their rent next month, or how they are supposed to put a meal on the table for their children. Young adults have started to develop both financial and human capital early on in their lives in order to ensure a stable future for themselves and their family. Ben Stein's letter, "Birds and Bees?
In the historic fiction novel “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily wants a mother more than anything in the world. But her past holds her back from love. So she runs away to three loving African american women who show her what a mother is and how she had always had one. In the book “The Secret Life of Bees” Lily struggles to feel love without her mother. With the help of an unlikely friend, Lily finds all the love she needed right inside of her heart and soul.
In The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily Owens is raised by her abusive father, T. Ray, because her mother died when she was young. Despite Lily’s negative upbringing, her nanny, Rosaleen Daise, and friend, August Boatwright, fill in for Lily’s mother’s absence and her father’s poor parental influence. T. Ray Owens raises Lily with discrimination and violence which encourages her to be the opposite. Lily’s father is very sexist and teaches her that girls are not as good as boys. T. Ray does not want Lily to read books because reading leads to college and he thinks that college is a waste of money for girls.
For insistence in the very beginning of the book there was a part where Lily catches a bee in a jar and keeps it as a pet but, Rosaleen makes her let it go. So Rosaleen buys Lily a chick instead.
Chapter 1 The five aspects of a quest are: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there. A book that uses the aspects of a quest very nicely is the secret life of bees. (a) The quester in this story is a young girl named lily owens who fights with her father and does not have a mother because lily accidently shot her when she younger.
After fleeing their little town, Lily and Rosaleen hitchhike to a place Lily knows her mother once visited (Kidd 51). They are fugitives from the law, and Lily is far from T. Ray, her father. However, this turn of events isn’t so bad. T. Ray is not at all caring or nurturing, Lily had relied of Rosaleen and the faint memory of her mother for any feelings of
When Lily finally stands up for herself against T-Ray, he says to her, “The truth is, your sorry mother ran off and left you. The day she died, she’d come back to get her things, that’s all. You can hate me all you want, but she’s the one who left you” (Kidd 39). The cruel truth and the way he tells her breaks Lily’s heart. As a consequence, she runs away with Rosaleen to be in a place where her mother had been.
According to the book, Lily exclaimed, “This was a great revelation—not that I was white but that it seemed like June might not want me here because of my skin color. I hadn’t known this was possible—to reject people for being white” (Kidd 87). This shows that reverse racism can occur as well with minorities feeling resentment toward the majority of the society. Though most people feel more comfortable communicating with their own race, they should not feel any resentment toward others who are different from them. Lily later said this in frustration, “There was no difference between my piss and June’s.
Lily is also haunted by the memory of accidentally killing her mother when she was a child. After her mother died, her father hired a black woman, Rosaleen, to act as her "Stand-in mother" ( Kidd 2). (there needs to be something here) When Rosaleen insults several racist men and gets arrested, Lily manages to break out Rosaleen and escape her father and the police. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they meet the Boatwright sisters.
Rosaleen aided Lily in finding her way to August. August helped Lily learn life skills and more about her mother. Lastly, June’s resentment towards Lily helped her because it represents the resentment of the
Lily, the main character in this novel is an insecure girl due to not only girls at school, but also her father, T-Ray, and his lies about her mother. By not having a motherly influence, lily didn’t have the example of a fine woman which is usually learned from girls’ mothers She even contemplated on going to an all girl school, in which it would teach her to be quote in quote “proper’. Rosaleen, as her housekeeper didn’t necessarily have a motherly influence on Lily, thus causing a lack of confidence in the teenage girl. This didn’t help the situation that Lily is haunted by the lingering thought of her mother’s death. In the end she ran away with her housekeeper Rosaleen, and to the only place she knew of, the
She is shown in her room talking to the bees she kept in the jar about her mother. Lily has always spent her time trying to get as close as she possibly could to her mother, despite the fact she was dead. She expresses how horrible it is living with a person as abusive as T.Ray. One day, Lily decides to avoid T.Ray and goes with Rosaleen downtown. A young white girl and an older colored woman walking together was often looked down upon in this time period.
She finds herself in a small town called Tiburon in South Carolina, living with August Boatwright who was once her mother’s maid. After staying in Tiburon for a while, Lily calls her father, curious if he knows what her favourite colour is. They only spoke for a short period of
While Rosaleen does a fine job as a stand-in for Deborah in the basic Motherly aspects Lily’s life lacked that kept her afloat, August seemed to do an even better job than Lily had imagined her mother to. She acts as more of a role model, and gives Lily the advice and patient love that she’s craved since the death of her mother. She refuses to resent Lily despite her being white and despite the wishes of ‘The Daughters of Mary,’ and invites her with open arms into this religious group, and teaches her about Mary in a familiar way that will appeal to her. She knew from the start that Lily wanted her mother more than anything, and applies Mary to her life by comparing her to a queen bee and the mother figure that she so desired. “Egg laying is the main thing, Lily.